The Vampire, the Witch and the Watcher

He waited on the sidewalk in front of Buffy's house for a minor epoch before venturing up to the porch and ringing the bell. After a few moments Giles opened the door, but he made no motion to step out of the way to let Spike in.

"What do you want, Spike?" he asked coolly.

"I'm here to see Red."

"Yes, well - I'm afraid there's been a change of plans--" the ex-Watcher began, only to be interrupted by Buffy's voice calling from up the stairs.

"Is that Spike?" she asked. "Let him in; I'll be right down."

Spike shouldered past Giles in the doorway and stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs for Buffy to appear. She came down the staircase, slowing before the bottom and eyeing him guardedly. "Spike."

"Slayer," he acknowledged carefully.

"Willow's upstairs in my room," she said. "We thought it would be better if I moved into my mom's old room for a while..." Spike nodded silent understanding.

"I really must protest," Giles said, coming forward between the two of them. "The hospital psychologist will see her on Tuesday. Having Spike here-- I think this is a terrible idea."

Spike snorted. "Yeh, you're not the only one. It is a terrible idea. Except everything you've tried up until now has been worse, hasn't it?" He looked up at Buffy. "I don't think it'll be very nice. Whatever you hear, don't come in." Spike took in Giles's guarded face with a wary glance. "And don't let him in, either. Promise me, Buffy."

She swallowed hard and nodded.

Spike took the stairs past her two at a time.

**********

He knocked softly at Buffy's bedroom door.

"Look, I told you, I don't need any more of your platitudes," Willow objected from behind the door.

Spike pushed the door open and strode into the room. "Good, because I don't have any for you."

Willow spun around from where she stood at the window, astounded. She wore white bandages wrapped neatly from wrist to elbow like the bracers of some ancient warrior, completely at odds with her faded jeans and fuzzy blue sweater. "Spike?" She came up to him, native curiosity momentarily overcoming her distress, and reached to touch his face. He closed his eyes to permit the inspection. "They told me what happened to you. I have to admit, I didn't believe it."

"Yeh, well... it took me a while, too."

Curiosity turned to suspicion again. "What are you doing here?"

"Buffy asked me to come talk to you. I suppose she thought I'd have something helpful to offer you. I don't."

He let his voice soften. "I was so sorry when Dawn told me how you lost your darling. The two of you were a right pair of turtle doves, always cooing over each other."

As though his gentle tone unlocked something deep within her, Willow burst into tears. "I should have been the one who died, not her. Tara never did anything. She didn't deserve to die. It's not fair!" she wailed, clutching at him desperately and snuffling into the folds of his jacket.

"Of course it isn't," he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. "It never is. The world isn't about fair. That's just something that children tell themselves when things go wrong. That they're not responsible." He tightened his arms around her. "It's not fair. How can it be fair when you're a murderer and you're still alive?"

"They deserved to die!" she protested, pushing away from him and out of his embrace. Her pale face was mottled pink now in sudden anger.

Now we get to the heart of it. Spike kept his voice level. "Maybe so. But no one appointed you executioner."

"They were evil!"

"And now they can't ever be anything else, can they? Whatever else you can say about them, now there are two fewer souls in the world. You tore them out of the world rather than let them live out their appointed spans - and you'll hear the screams of that rupture the rest of your life. Because no matter what you do now, you can't bring them back. No matter how much good you do, there's no way to right the imbalance you've left in your wake."

"You don't understand. I feel it all the time. I don't deserve this. They were evil!" she insisted again.

"Still had souls. Still had potential beyond what they were." He sighed. "Law of averages alone says I had to have killed evil men and women in all my years, along with the good. The rapist and the nun, the pederast and the paragon - their souls all sound the same to me now." The ghostly clamour rang louder now that he had turned his attention their way, but they had never been silent.

"How - how many?"

"What?" He refocused on her.

"How many do you hear?"

Spike closed his eyes wearily. "I've had some time to think about that. Before the day the Initiative captured me, I'd been a vampire for one hundred nineteen years, seven months and thirteen days. I didn't kill every day, but there were days I killed more than one, just for the sport of it. You're the one supposed to be the genius; you figure it out."

Willow's eyes widened, and one hand crept up over her mouth. "Oh ..."

"You're just one life, one soul. But if you live long enough then someday - maybe - you'll have done enough to atone. Die now, and you have to face whatever it is waits for us with that stain on your soul. Don't know what it is that you believe, but I'm not looking forward to my end."

Her face closed in anger - or possibly in fear. "Just because you buy into a fear mongering, paternalistic religion, one that usurped the proper place of the Goddess--"

"What about the Rede?"

Willow's mouth snapped shut so suddenly that Spike was afraid she'd bitten her tongue. The Wiccan Rede was the witches' code of conduct, a moral code equivalent to the Ten Commandments. That and the 'Rule of Three' were the only checks on her behaviour - if she chose to abide by them.

"You don't know anything about it!"

"I'll admit I have some impulse-control problems, but I've never been overly stupid," he observed mildly. "Your actions come back on you three-fold, isn't that it? Not brave enough to stick around and face the consequences of what you've done?"

"It isn't like that! I should-- I should be rewarded for taking out slime like Warren and Rack!" Willow raged.

He shook his head. "Did you think you were special? That there was some accelerated course that you could take, so as to get it all over with sooner? Be free of it all and not have anyone throw it back in your face anymore?"

Her face said all too clearly that that was exactly what she had thought. "Don't you understand?" he said. "It never ends. Never. The guilt and the grief - they're always there, just under the surface, ready to bubble up at any time. You can learn to deal with them day to day, but they'll never leave you. It's never over."

Willow lunged at him. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed, beating at him with her bloodstained, bandaged arms.

**********

Above them they could hear strident shrieks, followed by a sudden thud that sounded as though something - or someone - had been thrown to the floor. Buffy cut Giles off before he could reach the stairs.

"You're not going up there, Giles. Don't make me stop you."

"He may be doing her irreparable harm!"

Buffy closed her eyes and ran a hand over her weary face. "Giles. She's already tried killing herself. How much more harm can there be in letting Spike talk to her?"

"That's all very well to say, but clearly he's gone far beyond talking. I can't let this go on."

"And so you'll do what?" she challenged. "Use a spell to get me out of the way? Because you know there's no way you can beat me physically." She let the vague weary hurt she'd been feeling for months creep into her voice at last. "When did you stop being someone I could trust?"

"You'd rather trust him, after everything he's done?" Giles retorted, undeterred.

"Yes. Strangely enough, I trust him in this exactly because of everything he's done. There's no one else among us who can possibly understand what it feels like to have killed someone - and have to live with it." She looked up at the man who had been her teacher, her guide, and more than a father to her for many years, hoping she could make him understand. "You haven't seen him, haven't seen how much he's hurting. But he manages to live with it every single day. I think he can teach Willow the same thing."

Giles's expression hardened - but he made no further move towards the stairs. "I only pray you're right."

"So do I. But in any case, it's about time I did something for my friend. I've stood back and let her suffer long enough."

**********

They crumpled together to the floor and huddled there while she raged at him and wailed. He bore her blows stoically until they began to weaken and she collapsed against him, sobs wracking her thin body. Spike rocked her wordlessly until they subsided into incoherent murmurs against his chest.

"I'm nothing," she moaned as he held her. "She's gone, and I miss her so much, and I can't do anything to bring her back." Wrung out with her grief, she couldn't manage more than a reedy monotone.

"I've lost everything I had that ever mattered. Tara, the magic - I could have done so much good--" Willow's face twisted suddenly, and she pushed away out of Spike's embrace to scrabble across the floor to where the plastic-lined wicker wastebasket stood beside Buffy's desk. But he came up behind her and held her, bracing her forehead with one hand as she retched into the wastebasket helplessly, until nothing more than green bile came up from her abused stomach, her hair hanging damp and limp about her face.

Once he was reasonably certain she wouldn't be sick again, Spike released her and went across the hallway into the bathroom to wet a washcloth. When he returned, he knelt to present it to her and waited while she wiped her mouth and face clean.

"Is that why you chose to submit to a spell?" he asked, when she looked back up at him. "Because you thought that was a way to be punished enough? So you could get it over with?" He shook his head. "Guilt hurts. It won't ever stop hurting. You'll always have to live with the pain of what you did. But the question is, what wondrous moments can you wrest from your life in addition to the pain?"

"I'm nothing," Willow whispered again, though with somewhat less conviction as Spike helped her rise to sit on the bed.

"You're not nothing. Do we deserve to be punished for what we've done? Yes. But what purpose, what greater good would our deaths serve?"

"It would stop the pain," Willow said softly.

"It would," he agreed. "But only if you think death is an end, and not a doorway to another place." He looked up, as though he could spy heaven through the ceiling plaster. "I find I'm much less of an agnostic than I was - Mother would have been pleased." He returned his eyes to hers. "Despite everything, it can still be a glorious thing to be human, and alive. 'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.'"

She smiled. "If you're looking for quotes to inspire me about the wonders of staying alive, you really have to find something more secular. Try this: 'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!'"

"Touché, Red," Spike smiled. "I suppose I have to yield to your superior skills on that point, at least."

He settled into the chair beside the bed as Willow leaned back into the headboard. "Hey, I tried to destroy six billion people," she said with black humour.

"Yeh, but actual murder beats attempted every time, and by my count you're only at two. I'm still way ahead."

Her fingers twisted into the white quilt beneath her. "I killed... I murdered Rack and Warren." She didn't try to talk her way around it anymore; it was a flat statement of fact.

"Can't tell you the names of most of my dead. I'm still here, doing my best to put it to rights."

"But how can I go on? Tara's gone." She couldn't get away from this one essential point.

No more sympathy, now. "Yeah? So's my whole family, for one reason or another. Killed my mother m'self," he admitted.

Willow was shocked out of her focus on her own pain. "You killed your own mother?" she asked, taken aback.

"Turned her into a vampire so she wouldn't die of consumption - tuberculosis, you'd say today." He dropped his eyes as though shamed. "Didn't work out well. Ended up killing her again, after." His closed expression said he wouldn't welcome questions on the matter.

"Spike," Willow asked carefully, "Are you trying to say your dead are more important than my dead?"

He frowned. "Don't let's get into a pissing contest over this, Red."

"That would hardly be fair, given the advantage you've got, now would it?"

Spike stared at her for long moments, then blinked. "Was that a joke?"

Willow's mouth quirked in a small, hesitant smile. "Why? Was it so bad you couldn't tell?"

Their laughter together skirted the edge of hysteria, for a while.

"Tara's really gone," she said flatly, but without renewed tears.

"Not so long as you live, and remember her," Spike observed. "She deserves that, at least. No one else knew all the little things about her that made her so special." And who will remember me, when I'm gone?

"So is that it?" Willow asked with a pessimistic smile. "Live for her memory, and I'm cured?"

Spike laughed harshly. "Hardly. I made you acknowledge some hard truths - but you could turn around and put them out of your mind tomorrow, easily. I don't have any miracle cure. You just... go on. And if you're lucky, you only get the urge to do yourself in every other day." He paused for a deep breath. "But if you need someone to talk to, Buffy knows where to find me." He closed his eyes and leaned back into the chair, hands spread limply on his thighs. Voices washed over him; faces of people long dead hung before his closed eyes.

Minutes of silence passed, until Willow asked, "She doesn't have any idea, does she?"

Spike drew himself out of his introspection with some effort. "What's that?"

"Buffy. She doesn't know what she's asked you to relive, coming to talk to me."

"No," he agreed. "But I'll spare her the knowledge, if I can. I'm not looking for sympathy points."

"But it's not f--" Willow stopped herself, and flushed. "She's a killer too, you know."

"Sort of goes with the Slayer job description, Red," he said gently.

"No, that's not what I meant. When the Knights of Byzantium were after Dawn, Buffy killed more than a few of them - and they were all humans. How come she doesn't have to pay for it?"

"I don't think she remembers much from those last few days before she..." --it still pained him to say it-- "died. A small mercy."

"How can she just forget something like that? Back when we were seniors, she was there when Faith killed the deputy mayor. I held her hand through that when she nearly fell apart."

"Faith. That's the crazy Slayer, safely locked up somewhere, right?"

Willow nodded, letting herself be distracted momentarily from her original point. "But not before she stole Buffy's body, threatened to kill her mom - and slept with Riley," she said.

Something cold settled in the pit of Spike's stomach. "Is that so?" he asked, his words clipped and careful. "That would explain a number of things. I thought she seemed a little off that night."

"You saw her then? She would have taken you out just for the fun of it, if she felt like it," she said breathlessly. "You're lucky you survived."

"So it's all right that you and I are paying for what we've done, and she's not?" Willow persisted on her original tack when he didn't reply.

"I think... Buffy needs the world to be simple," he replied, after careful thought. "The good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black and all deserve to die. She couldn't survive doing what she has to do, otherwise. You and I, on the other hand, we're not such innocents."

She eyed him speculatively. "I don't think you're giving her enough credit."

He grimaced. "It would hardly be the first time I've fucked up, trying to predict her."

"Spike... can I ask you a personal question?" Willow asked gravely.

"I think I probably owe you at least that," he replied with equal gravity.

"When did you know you were in love with Buffy? Did I... did my spell--" she winced in expectation, but the geas didn't strike her for just the word. "Did I make you fall in love with her?"

"Kind of thought that was the point of it, Red," he smiled. "I was in love with her, while the spell lasted. But no, much as you'd like to, you can't take the blame for that one. Once it was over, it just gave me 'shag her to death' as another option on my 'ways to kill the Slayer' list. It took me... oh, at least another year before I came completely unhinged." He smiled softly at this reminiscence. "Thought at first I was going crazy." It doesn't matter how it happened anymore, if by loving her I can do her some good.

"How did you make it through the summer after she died?"

His forehead creased with remembered pain. "I promised her... that I'd protect Dawn. It gave me some purpose, something to focus on, beside how much pain I was in, every one of those hundred forty seven days."

"Tara's dead." Her voice was flat, but steady. "She's dead, and unlike Buffy, won't ever be coming back. But I guess she wouldn't want me to be dead, too. So what do I do now?"

She looked so lost, but he had no answers for her. "There's no secret to it. In time, it becomes bearable." Though I couldn't tell you how many years it's going to take me. "You just go on. You find something worth going on for." A possibility occurred to him. "It's not much, but Buffy and Dawn could use a hand investigating some blood bank thefts. I understand from Buffy that Xander's not going to be involved much for a while."

Willow made a face, whether at having to resume the mantle of 'research girl' or at Xander's renewed attempts at romance he couldn't tell. "I guess that's something, for now," Willow said. "I'll talk to Buffy and let you know how that goes."

He recognized a dismissal when he heard one, and stood to go.

"Spike, wait." She got up from the bed and came over to him. Taking his face in her hands, she stood on tiptoe to kiss his forehead in benediction. "Thanks."

**********

"Willow wants to see you," he said to Buffy as he came down. Buffy looked over at Giles and then back at Spike with an uncertain glance, then headed up the stairs.

Giles wasted no time in advancing on him. "What did you do to her?"

Spike immediately went on the offensive. "What did I do? What the hell did you do to her that has her spewing her guts up at the slightest thought of using magic?"

Giles was taken aback by Spike's vehemence, and found himself suddenly on the defensive. "I hardly think you're in a position to criticize our methods, Spike."

"Well it's about time someone did."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

Against his better judgement, Giles found himself trying to explain the choices he and the witches of the coven had made. "Willow's become by far the most powerful witch I've ever encountered. The dark magic she absorbed last year has become an indissoluble part of her, and she has no way of controlling it. The coven placed a geas on her to prevent her using it, until such time as she may be able to bring it under control."

"So you just went ahead and partitioned her brain? Where's the fucking free will in that, Rupert?"

"Willow agreed it would be for the best."

"Willow agreed," he said incredulously. "She's a child. She trusted you. They all trusted you. You were more a father than most of them ever had, and--"

"That's enough!" Giles roared, cutting him off in mid sentence. "I will not stand here discussing this with you. You are not part of this." His eyes narrowed, and he counterattacked. "Why are you really here, Spike?"

It was Spike's turn to try to justify his actions. "You know why. Buffy asked me to come and talk to Willow. I did that. I don't know if it will do her any good, but it was what Buffy wanted."

"And with this you hoped to win yourself back into her good graces? What exactly are your intentions regarding Buffy?"

"Intentions, Rupert? Who the hell died and made you her father?"

"According to you, I already am." Giles stepped forward, removing his glasses. All traces of the pedantic librarian were long gone from his face; this was Ripper now, intent on getting what he wanted. "I was her Watcher and advisor for five years, Spike - or William, if that's how you're styling yourself these days. I hope that she would also consider me her friend for many of those years as well. I won't see her hurt."

"You don't want her hurt? Oh that's rich, that is, coming from you. You're the man who walked out on her last year when she needed you. Just another one in a whole string of men, in fact - including her father. I stayed with her."

"Yes, you stayed, Spike. But to what end? To turn her away from her friends so that she would have no one to depend on but you? To persist in following her around even when she had told you there would be nothing further between you? To... to rape her?"

A knife to the gut, Rupert? Always knew that would be your style. "I never--"

"No. You didn't," Giles conceded. "But only because she stopped you."

Spike dropped his eyes. Whatever else I may ever do for her, I'm the man who once did that. No matter that she forgave me at the last. I'll always know. "Yes. And when I realized what I'd done I made bloody sure I'd never be able to do anything remotely like that again, didn't I?"

"That remains to be seen, doesn't it? Despite all the changes in you. So I will ask you again, Spike. What do you want here?"

Giles took a step back at the look that suddenly blazed up in his eyes. Incongruously, Spike suddenly seemed much more dangerous as a man than he had as a vampire.

"What do I want? Oh Rupert, shall I tell you what I really want, then?" Emotions that he'd fought hard to deny came boiling forth in an irresistible torrent of words, pouring out before he even had a moment to consider what he was saying.

"What I want is to fight for her and beside her and always be there to guard her back. I want to stand by her side and provide for her every need. I want to give her all the love and comfort and protection that a proper man should." Clenched fists thrust hard at his sides, punctuating each statement.

"I want to lie down every night by her side, and wake every morning in her arms. I want to draw out the days of her life as a goldsmith would draw hot gold wire; stretching it out further than anyone thinks possible. And on the day that I finally fail to protect her and she has to die, I want to be there to lay down my life at her side, because this world will be empty for me without her in it." Tears streaked unchecked now down the stark planes of his face.

"Is that good enough for you, Rupert?" he demanded, his voice breaking. "Will that do?"

Giles only stood and stared, his glasses dangling forgotten from his fingertips as Spike pushed past his unresisting form. Neither one of them noticed the slight figure that had stopped on the landing at hearing the voices below, a trembling hand at her mouth muffling her soft cry.

Spike finally gathered the ragged shreds of his composure again, angrily scrubbing the traces of tears from his face with the heels of his hands. He turned back, drew himself to his full height and looked up to challenge the ex-Watcher. Despite his larger stature, Giles took an involuntary step back.

"Not one word of this to Buffy, you understand," Spike hissed, "Or soul or no, I'll take your bloody head off. I'm not daft enough any more to believe that what I want and what she deserves are even in the same library, much less on the same page." With that final warning, he threw the front door wide and escaped.

"You poor bastard," Giles breathed at last, watching him stride away down the street.

*********

Corey waved him over as he arrived at Desperados later that evening. Curious, Spike followed him into the break room.

"That girl you were talking to the other day came by here looking for you," he said.

Buffy? His heart hammered suddenly in his chest. "Which one, Corey? Specifics would be good."

"The brunette," Corey replied, cupping his hands in front of his chest in unconscious reference to two of Allie's more prominent features.

Allie. Definitely not Buffy, he realized, as he reached for the hook with his work shirt. "What did she want?"

"She said sorry she missed you, she was going to take off for a while, and don't try to find her," Corey related, ticking the points off on his fingers.

"What? Why?"

"She didn't say. But... she looked pretty rough."

He suddenly had Spike's full attention. "What do you mean?"

"Like someone had worked her over pretty good. You know - black eye, split lip--" Corey found himself talking to empty air.

It was only as Spike hit the street in front of the bar that he realized he hadn't the slightest idea where to begin looking for her.

**********

Intuition more than insight eventually brought him around to the Motel California. Donnie Tranh sat lazily in his easy chair in his usual spot behind the cracked counter in the office, letting the blue glow of the portable TV wash over him. Spike wouldn't have been at all surprised to find him under a layer of dust.

"Donnie--" Spike began.

"You late!" the old man cackled, on seeing him. "She been here for hours. Mebbe got new boyfriend, eh?" He admonished Spike with a waggle of one crooked finger from where he sat. "You suppose' take better care of her, yes?"

"Just give me a key, Donnie," Spike growled in exasperation.

"She got," he replied. "Only one for room." More manic laughter followed Spike out of the office and to the door of their usual room.

The thin wood of the door shivered under his hammering fist. "Allie? I know you're in there. Donnie told me you were here."

"Go away, Spike." Her voice was muffled by the sound of the television playing at high volume. "I don't want to see you."

"Don't make me take this door off at the hinges - now open up!"

The sound from the television cut off abruptly, and the next thing he heard was the turning of the deadbolt. The door swung open a crack, and he pushed through.

Allie settled herself cross-legged on the end of the rumpled bed, pointedly ignoring him, and picked up the TV remote again. Barefoot and without makeup, she looked no more than sixteen - a teenager whose biggest concern should have been who would ask her to the prom.

The ice bucket sat in a puddle of meltwater on the dresser. She had placed a dozen or more ice cubes in a towel and was holding the resulting bundle gingerly against her cheek with her free hand. The flesh there was blackened and distended to the point that she couldn't open her right eye. Her lower lip was similarly swollen.

Spike knelt before the end of the bed and took the remote from her unresisting fingers. With his other hand, he lifted her chin gently until she had no choice but to look at him.

"Nice, huh? Should do wonders for business." Her puffy lip slurred her words into a lisp. "Think I lost a fucking tooth, too."

"Who did this to you?"

"I thought it was just business - you know, a little rough trade," she went on, as though she hadn't heard him. "Until he started going on about how all the girls down here work for him and how he wanted to see if I was... good enough. Think I broke his nose before he was done, though," she added proudly.

"He... raped you?" he asked softly.

Her laugh was as hard and brittle as her eyes. "Oh, Spike. Don't you know you can't rape a whore? You can only forget to pay them when you're done."

He cupped her bruised face gently in his hands. "Tell me how to find this guy and I'll see that he's taken care of."

She shook her head free from his grasp impatiently. "I don't need you to be my avenging angel, Spike." He flinched; she didn't see it. "I already know what I'm going to do to that bastard."

Allie got up and paced angrily about the room. As she moved, he could see more bruises revealed by her shifting clothing. "I'm sick of this game. I'm sick of taking shit from mouth-breathing lowlifes who think that just because they've got more muscles than I do that they can tell me what to do. I don't work for anyone but myself. And I take care of myself," she added, looking back at him. "Don't get involved."

"I am involved. What kind of a friend would I be if I didn't worry about you?"

"I never asked you to be my friend," she snapped.

"Whether you asked for it or not, it's happened. I can't just turn off caring about what happens to you."

"Yeah? Sucks to be you, then."

He took both her hands in his, then reached to brush a stray strand of hair away from her face. "Would it be so terrible to admit someone could care about you for you?"

For a moment he thought he saw tears welling in her dark eyes as she looked away - but it must have been a trick of the light, because when she turned back to him her eyes were hard. "Don't do this to me, Spike. Don't make me soft. I already made a mistake, leaving a message for you and then sticking around here long enough for you to find me."

"You can't just run away from this. Please, let me help, or--"

"Or you'll do what? You'll make me stay?" She snorted. "Maybe I should make you my pimp. Do you think that would improve things?"

Spike closed his eyes and released her hands, accepting defeat. "Will you come back?" he asked, his voice barely audible over the omnipresent hum of freeway traffic nearby.

She looked back at him and her face held no expression. "I really don't know, Spike. Make sure Donnie gets the key back before you go, okay?"

Part 24:

-------------------

A Week in the Death of William the Bloody

"If you've got personal problems you need to take care of, come talk to me," Jake had said, when Spike had finally returned to the bar later that night. "We can work something out. But just take off like that again and you don't need to worry about coming back." Chastened, Spike had only nodded, and returned to work.

Instead of the usual rotation, he'd persuaded Corey and the other bouncers to let him finish out the shift at the front entrance. It was a position they ceded willingly, since everyone complained of the chill evening air. From this post, in quiet moments, Spike surveyed the street, looking for unfamiliar faces among the crowds. By the end of the night, he'd decided what to do, and asked Jake to give him a week. Jake had agreed, if reluctantly, and hadn't asked questions.

After work that night, and every night following, Spike spent hours walking the streets. He hardly slept, snatching a few hours at the Motel California or in the break room back at Desperados, but used his time questioning anyone who was willing to talk to him. Most were reluctant, but he marshalled the skills in persuasion he'd acquired in a century of dealing with Drusilla, and gradually gathered the information he wanted.

It didn't take him a week.

He had a name - Tonio - and the information that he could often be found at one of the strip clubs down the street from Desperados. He wasn't at all surprised when he found it was the Orange Grove.

Spike entered the Orange Grove late one afternoon. He paused for a moment inside the doorway to let his sun-dazzled eyes adjust to the dimness within. Despite the early hour, the club was about half full. The after-work crowd filled most of the tables near the stage, where a disinterested dancer was contorting her nearly nude body into improbable poses around the pole while the sound system thumped away.

He walked past the row of video lottery terminals with their attendant zombies - he took a second look, because in Sunnydale it paid to check out that sort of thing - but all the players were simply humans, mesmerized by the rapidly flickering lights. Like automatons, they deposited quarter after quarter and pressed buttons hoping for a payoff.

Beyond them the room opened out into a shallow flight of stairs. Up a few steps there was a secondary room filled with pool tables, with a number of games in progress. Spike's attention was immediately drawn to a man at one of the tables. He had the look of an athlete who'd been retired and had been living the good life a little too long. Broad shoulders and a generous belly strained the lines of his expensive suit. He was out of condition to the point that just playing pool had left his face slick and his hair in disarray. But his most outstanding feature by far was the large white plaster across his nose, in startling contrast to his oily, acne-scarred cheeks.

Usually Spike was able to distance himself from passing judgment on Allie's profession, maintaining a certain equanimity about it all. But the thought of this... gorilla... grunting and pumping away on top of her as she struggled to free herself filled him with formless rage. He swore that he could feel his features rearranging and fangs descending before he got hold of his emotions again.

Instead of lunging across the green felt and satisfying murderous urges, Spike rummaged in his pockets and turned over a fistful of limp bills to a scantily clad waitress in return for a table and a set of pool balls. He set up, took a cue from the rack on the wall behind him, and broke noisily, channelling his aggression into the balls.

He played aimlessly, setting up wild trick shots at a whim. The waitress brought him beer after beer as he played and drank long enough to hear Tonio and his companions discuss their plans for the evening, and Spike began crafting a plan of his own, a plan that seemed more and more justified in proportion to the amount of alcohol he had consumed.

He watched them as they left, noting with disdain that Tonio put the evening's expenses on account, and didn't bother to tip. As far as he was concerned, it was just another strike against him.

Spike waited a few minutes, letting Tonio get a head start, then waved the waitress over. "Thanks, pet." Taking the startled woman by the back of the neck, he pulled her close and planted a beery kiss on her lips. He then tucked a twenty deep into her cleavage, and spun to follow his quarry. "Got to see a man about a girl."

**********

"Wake up, you ape," Spike demanded, nudging the heavyset man with the steel toe of one boot where he leaned against the dumpster. His victim grunted, but opened his eyes.

A cold smile crossed Spike's lips - a smile Buffy would have recognized - that was sharp enough to flense the flesh from his bones. "So you're Tonio." He dragged the other man to his feet by the lapels of his now-ruined suit.

"Who wants to know?" Tonio wheezed, struggling to stay balanced on his feet, because Spike had lashed his hands behind him. "Whoever you're working for, I can double what they're paying you," he offered, with a show of bravado.

"Oh, me? I'm no one important." His first blow took Tonio squarely in the stomach, and doubled him over. "And I'm not working for anyone. This is entirely... personal." Slowly and methodically, with skills that could only have been gained through a century of violence, Spike began to take him apart, concentrating on duplicating Allie's injuries as much as he remembered them.

Spike made sure that he'd survive, of course. That was the whole point. He had to feel every bruise, every break and every lost tooth just as Allie had. It was with grim satisfaction that he finally left Tonio lying limp and naked in the grimy alley, and staggered away.

**********

He woke in a familiar bed with an aching head and a sour mouth. It took him a few minutes to place himself back in the room at the Motel California. Spike levered himself up from the bed and walked cautiously into the bathroom. He ran water into the cracked basin, rinsed his mouth and splashed his face before looking up at himself into the mirror.

He remembered then - with a kind of shameful joy - what he'd done to Tonio. The beating, the careful breaking of his ribs under a heavy boot, the--

Spike barely made it to the toilet before being violently ill. He collapsed to the cold tiles, shuddering and clutching at himself.

He'd been a man for nearly a year now - but he still thought he could feel the demon take a bleeding, ragged mouthful from his soul.

**********

Beth Patterson had been an honour student throughout high school, and valedictorian of her graduating class. She was the kind of overachiever that other students should have hated - if she just hadn't been so darn nice. While maintaining a straight-A average, she'd also been captain of the basketball team that had made it all the way to the state finals before being defeated by only a few points in the final match.

No one had been surprised, then, that she had received dozens of offers of full scholarships both academic and athletic from universities and colleges across the country. What had surprised even her closest friends was that she had turned down all the glamorous offers - in favour of a degree in sociology with a major in social work from Cal Poly.

When questioned why she hadn't considered a more prestigious school, she had just smiled and replied: "This is what I have to do." That, and play for the Mustangs, making the Big West All Rookie basketball team in her freshman year.

On receiving her degree - magna cum laude, of course - Beth had shocked everyone again by choosing the relative backwater of Sunnydale California in which to begin her career. "Have you looked at the statistics?" she'd asked. "Next to Cleveland, of all places, Sunnydale has the highest incidence of runaways and broken families in the country. What better place to start making a difference?"

The beleaguered caseworkers at the understaffed Social Services office in Sunnydale welcomed her with open arms, immediately assigning her a caseload that would have taxed the resources of an experienced employee. Beth accepted with good grace, and was on her way to becoming a most valued colleague.

None of this, of course, was obvious about the battered corpse found in an alleyway not far from the Bronze, its throat raggedly torn and its face beaten beyond recognition. Sunnydale police would barely have raised an eyebrow at another death by 'neck rupture', if not for the fact that the body had been found completely naked. In any other city, Beth's death would have made 72-point front-page headlines; in Sunnydale, it was a page four story, almost hidden by news of a tax hike being voted on by city council.

The police consulted dental records and missing persons reports nationwide in an effort to identify the body. It only took about a week - but by then, of course, it was already much too late.

**********

Spike returned to work and did his best to forget, both what he'd seen and what he'd done. The word got around the bar quickly to the rest of the staff that something had happened to Spike's girlfriend, and that they'd subsequently broken off with each other, so they all tried to cut him some slack. But everyone agreed that he wasn't quite the same, after. He was doing his job as well as before, but he talked less and kept to himself more - and Jake made no more mention of him dancing with the customers.

After several days, everyone had settled - if not comfortably, then at least professionally - back into their various working relationships with him. Tina tried the longest to get a smile out of him, but eventually even she gave up and just let Spike be as morose as he pleased.

By the end of the week it was understandable that Joey was eager to be able to give Spike some good news. He caught up to Spike as he came out of the break room. "Hey Spike, your girlfriend said to tell you she'd be right out."

It took a moment to realize that he must have meant Allie. She's back. Allie's come back. It had been more than a week since she'd left, and he'd almost given up hope of ever seeing her again. He let a small grin cross his lips, the first in some time. Maybe she's changed her mind. Maybe she'll let me help.

He spotted her as she left the washroom and waved to attract her attention. Her rounded face bore no trace of the injuries she'd received at Tonio's hands. As she crossed the floor, she reached into her purse to pull out a tube of lipstick and expertly refreshed her smile. Knowing Spike was watching, she teasingly rolled her hips with every stride, and he glanced up into the security mirror for a better view from behind her. Brutal seconds ticked by as he searched for her in the glass, until cold realization flooded him. Allie had no reflection. He closed his eyes and leaned heavily back against the bar.

"What's the matter, Spike?" she whispered darkly as she came up to him. "I thought you liked to watch."

"Please no," he sighed in futile protest, unable to do more than raise his hands weakly against her. What have I done to you? I should have stopped this... I should have known...

"You know, Spike, there was only one thing you forgot to tell me. You never told me how much fun it was." She hooked one impossibly strong hand behind his neck and forced his head down to capture his mouth with hers. Cold lips crushed against his and then her tongue pushed roughly into his mouth. She tasted as he'd often imagined she would, of smoke and stale night air, but now touched with decay. Her teeth scraped over his lower lip as she pulled back, drawing blood before she released him.

"Who did this to you?" he gasped, recovering his breath after her assault.

"Ran into some of your friends. You know, the ones you thought were at the clinic? It's a way bigger operation than your Slayer" --she pronounced the word with disdain-- "ever imagined. They've got a whole warehouse full of stuff going on."

"I should have been with you. Allie... I'm so sorry--"

"I'm not. I asked them to; I begged them. I even said we could have some fun first, before they did me." She lifted her shirt to expose smooth skin. "Look - you can't even see any of the marks anymore."

Spike wanted to vomit as Allie went on to describe what had been done to her before she'd been turned. She lingered over the descriptions in obvious delight.

"I see now why your Buffy only ever wanted to fuck vampires," she observed brightly. "The endurance is incredible. Too bad these boys didn't really have any imagination. Now you--" her smile chilled his blood, "I'll bet you would have been some fun.

"See you around, Spike," she murmured with a lewd wink and a bruising grab at his crotch. Blowing him a kiss from her now smudged lips, she was gone.

He clutched at the bar to keep his footing, the taste of his own blood metallic and sour in his mouth. When he wiped it from his lips, he saw it was the exact shade of her lipstick. When he finally came back to himself enough to realize that he had to go after her, the night was half over and Allie was long gone.

**********

"When are you going to tell him that you heard what he said to Giles?" Dawn asked her, for about the third time.

"I told you; if I could find him to tell him, I would have already," Buffy replied sharply. "But he hasn't been at work, and Clem hasn't seen him for days." She gathered her jacket and slung her backpack over her shoulder. "And I have too many other things that I have to do first - like finding someone to cover the end of my shift tonight so I can be back here to meet another damn social worker--"

Dawn drew back, stung, and Buffy relented. "Oh Dawn, I'm sorry. It's making me crazy, not being able to find him and not knowing what's happened to him, when I thought we might finally... And I can't just ditch work or miss this meeting tonight, because that risks everything else that's finally going right." She dug in her jacket pockets to confirm that she had her house keys.

"Okay. I'll be back about eight. Make sure you have something decent to eat, not just pizza - and don't leave dishes in the sink, and--"

"Buffy, I'll be fine. I was fine alone for months before Willow and Giles were here; I'll be fine alone again now that they've gone back to their own place. Really." Dawn opened the front door. "Now get going before you're late to work."

"I'll bring home some videos," Buffy promised, as Dawn ushered her out. "We'll have a chick flick night. We can make popcorn."

"Go!" Dawn laughed and rolled her eyes.

**********

Dawn responded to the doorbell to find a dark haired young woman standing on the front porch. She wore a severe grey suit and at her side she held a slim black leather briefcase.

"Um, hello?" she said, not recognizing her.

"Hi Dawn. Miss Patterson had a family emergency. I'm Miss Phillips." She flashed her ID. "I hope it's okay. I know I'm a little early," she said, checking her watch.

Dawn noted the familiar logo of the Social Services department, and relaxed. "Sure. Come on in. Can I get you something to drink?"

**********

They settled in the living room with a pot of tea and a plate of Dawn's latest homemade cookies on the table between them. Miss Phillips settled back thoughtfully with a cup, and consulted her notes.

"Is it all right if we go ahead and start? There's a lot to cover."

Dawn nodded agreement, and the social worker began with a series of questions - 'How do you feel about your performance at school?'; 'Do you feel you have friends you can confide in?'; 'What did you have for dinner tonight?'; and 'How good a job do you think your sister is doing balancing work and looking after the household?'

Dawn knew full well that answers to even the most innocent-seeming questions could carry a lot more weight than they appeared to on the surface, and so she considered her words carefully and tried to answer as thoroughly as possible. In any case, Miss Phillips - like Miss Patterson before her - was a definite improvement over bitchy Doris Kroeger who had been her social worker last year. Miss Phillips made occasional notations, but for the most part, watched Dawn's reactions.

"Buffy should really be home any time now," Dawn said, at a momentary lull in the questions. "Did you want to wait and meet her before we go on?"

Miss Phillips leaned forward and set her empty cup back on the table. "There's really only one thing I don't understand, Dawn," she said, with a small frown.

"What is it?" Dawn's gut tightened with apprehension. Did I remember to say Buffy always buys lettuce so I can have salads? Did I sound like I was complaining that she has to work nights? I like having time to myself in the evenings...

"I'm sure it's just an oversight... but it doesn't say anywhere in the files how you felt when you found out that for most of last year a vampire had been dicking your sister."

"It what? I... what?" Dawn stammered, her heart suddenly hammering. The resulting rush of blood was loud in her ears. Surely she hadn't heard what she'd just thought she heard. "I beg your pardon?"

"Because you just know Spike must have had every hole of her, in the bushes, in the alley - maybe even in your bed," Miss Phillips went on as though she hadn't heard a word of Dawn's protest. "Something like that is bound to be traumatic, don't you think? How did you deal with it?"

"Who the hell are you?" Dawn demanded, struggling up from her chair and backing away.

"I'm Allie. Spike's told me so many things about you, I thought I'd like to come meet you for myself," she said, with a disingenuous smile. "He likes it when I punish him, you know. So I thought I'd finally do it properly."

Dawn had always had a certain scorn for the victims in horror movies who simply stood and let the monsters attack them. But now she found herself frozen to the spot as Allie's features morphed and remoulded themselves to reveal icy yellow eyes and serrated fangs.

"Maybe I'll even let you tell him what a good job I did, when I'm done with you." Allie crouched over the table, ready to spring.

Dawn's mind somehow found that moment to wonder how long it had taken Spike to learn to talk around his fangs without lisping. As though that absurdity were the key that set her free, she whirled and ran.

She raced into the kitchen and almost immediately cursed herself. Buffy's weapons chest was only a few feet away from where she had been sitting, and she desperately racked her brain for an idea how to get back into the living room. But then Allie burst through the doorway and she was left with no time to think, only to react. Dawn grabbed the nearest object to hand and swung it with all her strength.

It was only when Allie shrieked and clutched at her face that Dawn realized what she was holding; she'd torn down the braided string of garlic that hung beside the doorway. Good thing I like to cook Italian, she thought - and had a sudden flash of inspiration.

She backed away around the kitchen island, her eyes never leaving Allie - who had shaken off the worst of the effects and had begun advancing on her again. Dawn felt rather than looked behind her for the spice rack mounted on the wall. Her fingers slipped over the containers as she counted along the rows. And Buffy laughed when I alphabetized the spice rack. She made her choice and pulled a jar from the rack. A quick twist and a flick of one thumb and she had removed the cap and the shaker lid, and Dawn flung the contents into Allie's face.

The results were instantaneous; Allie's face blistered and peeled everywhere the garlic powder touched her skin, and her eyes reddened and ran with viscous, cloudy tears. She screamed in agony, but didn't stop advancing. She reached for Dawn blindly, her hands scrabbling along the countertop in an effort to find her way. "Your sister won't be able to find all the pieces when I'm done with you!"

"Stay away from me you bitch!" Dawn grabbed the largest knife from the knife block and, holding it tightly in both fists, plunged it down through Allie's hand - where it stuck in the butcher-block top of their brand new built-in dishwasher. Realizing that this would probably be her only chance, Dawn dashed back into the living room and threw open the weapons chest.

Buffy's going to kill me... She wrenched open the lid and groped within, throwing out stakes and bottles of holy water in favour of the crossbow at the bottom. Cranking it back feverishly, she managed to get one of the bolts loaded into position just as Allie came through the doorway from the kitchen, her ruined hand splattering blood everywhere. Bracing her shoulders against the wall, Dawn fired.

The bolt buried itself in Allie's shoulder.

She wiped her running eyes and laughed crazily. "Is that the best you can do? It's no wonder you were so jealous of your sister all these years." Allie pulled the bolt free and cast it skittering across the floor behind her.

Dawn worked desperately at the crossbow trying to load another, but Allie leapt for her and carried them both down onto the floor. Her uninjured hand closed crushingly tight around Dawn's throat, and she ran her tongue in a grotesque caress up Dawn's cheek. "Or maybe you're just jealous because he's had both of us and never once tried for a taste of you. Is that it? He'll never know now what he missed."

Her fangs sank deeply into Dawn's flesh.

**********

Buffy heard Dawn's screams before she even felt the tingling sensation that warned of a vampire's presence nearby, and she travelled the last block to home in what even for her was record time. Throwing open the door, she met a scene out of her nightmares. Dawn sprawled limply in the grasp of a wild-eyed female vampire in the middle of the living room floor. Buffy reacted with the first thing to hand; she flung the two rented videos in their cases and struck the vampire squarely on the top of the head.

Shattered plastic scattered across the floor, but the vampire only looked up slowly, meeting Buffy's gaze with liquid gold eyes that melted back into brown. "Nice to see you again too, Slayer. Remember me?" She got to her feet, carefully keeping Dawn positioned in front of her and maintaining her death grip on her throat.

Buffy's blood ran cold. Spike's girlfriend. "Allie."

"Very good. I was just introducing myself to your sister here when you so rudely interrupted us. Don't try it--" she warned, as Buffy started towards her. "I can still finish her off before you can stop me." Without warning, Allie flung Dawn's limp form at Buffy, and used the moment to make her escape.

Buffy caught Dawn and settled her gently to the floor again, then snatched up a stake for the pursuit, but Dawn stirred and moaned on the floor, bringing her to a sudden halt. Relief washed over Buffy so strongly that she couldn't even bring herself to care when she heard the back screen door bang shut behind Allie's retreating form, and she clutched Dawn to her, rocking her as though she were still the baby that memory insisted she once had been.

"I'm okay," Dawn insisted weakly, pushing back from Buffy's overprotective embrace.

"You are not okay; you are going to the hospital."

"I don't need a hospital," Dawn insisted, drawing herself up to lean back against the wall. "I'll be okay; she didn't have any time..." Memory came back with a rush. "She said something before, about punishing Spike."

Spike. Someone has to... I have to tell him. Before she goes after him too. "I can't leave you here; it's not safe."

"Call Giles. I'll go to Willow and Giles." Dawn clutched at Buffy's jacket. "Promise me you'll find Spike."

Buffy peeled Dawn's hand away from her lapel and held it tightly. "I promise."

**********

Spike thought that if he had to listen to that fucking Shania fucking Twain sing "Forever and For Always" one more time, he would probably welcome madness, instead of just flirting with the edge of sanity as he had for the past two days. His condition was not in any way improved by the contents of the flask in his hip pocket, nor by his realization that he not only knew the title of the current song but the artist as well, and found himself occasionally following the lyrics. His thoughts circled endlessly around what had happened and what he could have, should have done, and ended up going nowhere useful at all. He was so wrapped up in the cottony numbness provided by the alcohol that he didn't even see Buffy until she was standing right in front of him.

'Cause I'm keeping you
forever and for always
We will be together all of our days
Wanna wake up every
morning to your sweet face... always

"Bitch," he muttered - meaning Shania, still. "Stop... stop trying to see me," he added to Buffy, but more to his feet than to her face.

Buffy could barely believe the change from the man that had come to see Willow not that long ago. He looked even paler than usual, and dissolute, and she decided that a gentle approach wouldn't even reach him. "Bad news, Spike. Your girlfriend's a vampire," Buffy said bluntly.

"She's not my--" It certainly didn't matter any more how the relationship was defined. He pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to dislodge the stabbing pain that had taken up residence between his eyes.

"She showed up at the house posing as a social worker and got Dawn to invite her in."

"Oh god - is Dawn--" Oh my Little Bit. What have I done? His gut churned, as though he'd swallowed poison. Everything I touch turns to dross. He felt his legs give way, and he collapsed heavily against the wall to end up huddled on the floor, his arms around his knees.

Buffy knelt before him and tugged impatiently at his hair until he was forced to look up at her again. "Don't go all catatonic on me, Spike; I need you to help me find her. Dawn's going to be all right. She put up one hell of a fight - and we got lucky that I was coming home early tonight." She stood and offered him her hand. "Now get up and help me."

Disdaining her offer of assistance, Spike got slowly back to his feet. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I knew about Allie," he admitted reluctantly.

"You knew?" she demanded, outraged. "What the hell do you mean, you knew?"

"She was in here coming on to me two days ago." He felt sick again, just at the memory. "That's when I found out."

"Two days?" Buffy's voice threatened to break several city noise ordinances. "We're talking about a vampire that probably has personal information about all of my friends and family, and you've known for two days?"

"If you're going to repeat everything I say, this conversation is going to take a very long time," he observed acerbically.

Her open palm cracked harshly against his cheek and brought flashes of light to his vision. "What the hell is wrong with you? You let her leave here, knowing that? You let her attack my sister? You must know how many people she could have killed even in only two days - or were you too busy thinking with your dick to manage even that simple math?"

His face contorting with rage, Spike slammed her back against the wall, pinning her wrists. She let him hold her there, though he knew she could break free any time she wished. "Yes, fine - I fucked her sometimes. Is that what you want to hear? She was still my friend, damn it!" He released her hands and stepped back before Corey or any of the others found it necessary to intervene. As yet, they were still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "I can't..."

"Your friend is dead, Spike," Buffy said with surprising gentleness. "There's nothing there but the demon now."

"That's bullshit, Slayer, and you'd know it if you ever took a moment to pull your bottle-blonde head out of your ass. That's just a nice little bedtime story you tell yourself so you can sleep at night. Go ahead, tell me how much I've changed," he challenged.

When she didn't answer, he turned back to face her. "Strip away the animus - the soul - and you expose pits of jealousy, rage, fear, greed, lust... The demon... feeds. Allie's still in there - only now she just doesn't care any more. But everything she was or might have been is still there. I couldn't kill her. Do you want me to admit it? I froze. I couldn't--" His voice was hoarse with emotion.

Buffy closed her eyes, and when she spoke again her voice was suffused with pity. "William, we can't--"

"I know. Let's go find her and kill her, then. I guess that's what we're both best at, isn't it?" Spike ducked into the break room to grab his jacket. "Tell Jake thanks for everything," he called to Joey as he pulled it on. "I don't think I'll be coming back."

**********

"The first logical stop would be her place," Buffy directed as they reached the street.

"I don't know where she lives," Spike had to admit. Then, off Buffy's incredulous look: "She kept that part of our relationship strictly business - and Allie never took business home with her." He took a moment to survey the street before continuing. "You try Donnie Tranh's 'Motel California' down by the freeway off ramp. That's where we'd usually go. If she's not there, come back here and give me a hand checking the streets where she used to hang about."

"Motel California, check." Buffy's voice was all business, but when she turned to him the woman's compassionate eyes shone in the hard mask of the Slayer's face. "I'm sorry, William," she said.

"Yeah. Save it for later." He thrust his hands in his pockets. "But Buffy... thanks."

**********

The Motel California, Buffy decided, was a dump of the first order. It had been built in a neo-Spanish style, and she supposed it had been quite elegant once; its two levels of white stucco arches surrounded a large central courtyard with a reflecting pool. Of course, that had been in the days when the view had been more than merely the thick concrete supports of the freeway. Now the stucco was stained and cracking away in large patches from the underlying structure. The courtyard pool now held only an assortment of flyblown trash that she had no desire to examine any more closely than necessary.

The small Asian man in the fluorescent-lit office didn't even look up from the flickering screen of his small television when she came in. "Twenty bucks an hour, with a forty dollar deposit," he said in flawless English, to her complete surprise. When she didn't reply, he swivelled his recliner to look up at her. "What did you expect, bad dubbing? I was born here in Sunnydale."

"I'm not here for a room," she said defensively, feeling at a definite disadvantage for her automatic assumption. "I'm looking for--"

"That's too bad," he interrupted, leaning forward in his chair to better take in the sight of her where she stood at the counter. "You could make some good money."

Must... control... fist of death. "Are you Donnie Tranh?"

"No, I'm Vincent. Donnie's my old man. What do you want him for?"

"Just tell me if Allie's here," she asked, commending herself for her self-control in not laying him out flat on his own countertop. "You know Allie?"

He shrugged expressively. "The girls all look the same after a while."

"She's about this tall," Buffy said, indicating a height above her own with one hand. "Dark curly hair, and... you know..." Her hands cupped the air in front of her chest. When he still showed no sign of recognition, she tried a different tactic. "She'd maybe come in sometimes with a tall skinny blond guy. English. Looks like a refugee from a Billy Idol look-alike contest?"

"You mean Spike?" he asked, to her complete astonishment. "Why didn't you say so? Everyone around here knows Spike."

"I haven't seen the two of them together for at least a week - and they used to come by pretty regularly, too. If that's the girl you mean, then no, she's not here." He turned back to his television, no longer interested in her.

"You won't mind if I look around a bit then," she said. Vincent just waved one hand dismissively, already absorbed by the action on screen.

Buffy made two circuits of the motel, once on each level, straining to extend the web of her Slayer's awareness and waiting for the piercing sliver of sensation in her belly that said vampire near. Twice around, and she felt nothing. There was no one about other than humans damned in all the ordinary ways. Time was, she could have pinpointed Spike himself at several hundred yards. Of course, if Spike were still a vampire, we wouldn't have this problem. Resigned, she headed back towards Desperados.

**********

By the third block, Spike was beginning to lose hope that he'd ever find Allie in the vicinity. He'd poked his head into an uncounted number of clubs, adult video stores and assorted shops, looking for disturbances and asking after her. On any other day, he would have been gratified at the warmth of his reception, but today it only left him frustrated. If anything, there seemed to be less than the usual amount of vampire activity in the neighbourhood. He circled back to the alley where they had first met, at a loss for how to continue.

"Well I guess you'd have to call us both creatures of habit, hey Spike? Coming back to familiar ground this way." Her voice, once soothing, now poured like cold venom into his ears. She glided out of the shadows with more grace than she'd ever had in life, and he wondered how he possibly could have thought she was a vampire the first time they'd met. In his memory, her rounded form was vibrant and warm with life. Now she was cold, though still voluptuous, and deadly - a poisoned peach.

The intense red of her lips came not from her lipstick, he realized with a start, but had instead the sheen of fresh blood. Seeing his the focus of his gaze, she licked her lips with agonizing slowness. A freshet of blood spilled down her chin and she wiped it up with one finger that she slipped seductively into her mouth.

"I knew you'd come looking for me here eventually," she said. "I was just settling a little disagreement with Tonio. The bastard actually told me I'd never make it as a dancer, can you believe it? Told me I'd be a ten-dollar whore all my life."

"You know I can't let walk away from here, Allie."

"You managed it well enough the other day."

"That was a mistake."

"Story of your life, isn't it, Spike? You were failure as a man, and then you were a failure as a vampire. All of that power to do anything you wanted - so what do you do? You get stupid over something you think is love, and run off to find yourself a soul again. Make yourself weak again. She's got you running around doing her dirty work."

"This is what I have to do. If you know me at all, you should have known that, before you attacked someone I care about."

"So you immediately have to rush out and protect her? That's noble, Spike. Stupid, but noble. But that's just your speed, isn't it? Protecting little girls? Too bad it took you two days to figure it out." She snarled, her face a mask of rage and pain. "Where the fuck were you all of my life?"

"Allie..." he began. "I'm sorry. I tried to do everything I could. I almost loved you. You wouldn't let me--"

She laughed cruelly. "You are just too easy, Spike. A little sob story, and you crumble. 'Oh boo hoo, I've had a bad life,'" she said, in a singsong tone. Then she dropped her voice an octave and added, in a poor imitation of Spike's accent: "'Don't worry, pet. My love will save the day.'"

"You don't know anything about love," he protested.

Allie only laughed again. "I know she never wanted you. She didn't want you at all, Spike." Without warning, and with blinding speed she lunged at him, pinning him to the alley wall.

"She wanted something conveniently man-shaped to get her off. It didn't matter to her if you got anything out of it - who cares if their vibrator has feelings? That's all you were to her, Spike. You were the one who was stupid enough to believe it could have been love."

"No..." he objected weakly, struggling in her grip.

"You were convenient," she hissed coldly in his ear. "Why would she bother to think of you as a person? Did you really think anything would be different if you had a soul?"

She giggled with demented amusement. "Love's a game for fools, Spike. You should have learned that by now. It does nothing but blind you to what's really going on. There's pleasure--" She shifted until she held him pinned to the wall by the throat with one hand while the other leisurely explored his body - then her fingers suddenly doubled into a fist that drove hard into his stomach, leaving him bent over gasping for air. "--and there's pain." She dragged him vertical again against the wall. Tugging his shirt loose from his jeans, she raked her nails viciously over his skin, tearing at one nipple until blood welled freely. "And nothing else. And sometimes the pain is pleasure, isn't it?"

He hissed, but didn't struggle any more in her grasp. "You still want this, don't you?" she asked in a breathy whisper. "A chance to go back, to be strong again and forget how it hurts to be alive. Isn't that what you were always telling me?"

Just give in. I'm so tired of fighting. Make me what I was. I don't deserve to be a man, so let me be a monster again. Buffy knows what to do to monsters. He closed his eyes and turned his head to one side, willingly baring his throat to her fangs. Her bite was quick and clean - she'd always been a quick studywas his unwilling thought - a sharp, slicing pain and then warmth and numbness radiated outward from his wounds. He would have collapsed without her hold on him.

The world had dimmed to hold only the two of them when she finally withdrew from him. She used one nail to gouge a furrow in her own arm until the dark blood pooled freely, then lifted her wrist to his lips. "You know this is the only way to make the pain go away," she purred tenderly in his ear, nuzzling him again. "I told you - I'll always know what you need."

Spike held her bloodied wrist to his mouth with one hand, and brought his other arm up to press her more tightly to him as he drank. "It'll all be over soon, sweet. Soon the two of us will be able to take whatever we want." She laughed, smoothing his hair and petting his cheek with her free hand, feeling him shiver.

"Allie, sweet... I'm so sorry," he murmured when he finally let her wrist drop. She had only enough time to look up at him, confused, before her dark curls blazed up in a glorious corona of flames. The breath she drew to shriek her outrage and pain pulled the fire into her dead lungs. For an instant she seemed to glow from the inside and her eyes became windows into the hell for which she was destined. Then in the next moment nothing remained of her but a cloud of ashes and dust, already being dispersed by the winds.

Spike's Zippo fell from his hand and clattered to the pavement. He didn't hear it fall, didn't feel the pain of the blisters forming on the skin of his face and neck, and didn't even smell his own singed hair. Now that her support was gone he fell to his knees. He wavered there for a moment; trembling like an ecstatic in the grip of some vision before collapsing in a sprawl, face down in the welcome blackness of the shadows.

**********

There was a brief moment as Buffy drew nearer to Desperados that she thought she felt the presence of a vampire, but it vanished too quickly for her to determine a direction. A nameless dread gripped her and she picked up her pace. When she heard the first siren wail in the distance, she broke into a flat-out run.

She arrived back at the bar just in time to see a sheet-covered figure on a stretcher being wheeled out of the Orange Grove strip club, surrounded by dazed patrons and bystanders. She pushed through the ring of curious onlookers, easily brushing aside hands that tried to hold her back, until she was next to the still, covered form. Before the paramedics could stop her, she had stripped the concealing sheet away. Her knees trembled, as tension she hadn't even realized she felt drained away - the victim was a heavyset man with dark, greasy hair. The only thing familiar about him was the ragged wound in his throat that testified mutely to the cause of death.

Buffy let the paramedics push her back from the stretcher as she turned to scan the crowd for some sign of Spike. She saw nothing. Maybe he's inside already. Police officers were already fastening crime scene tape over the door to the club, so she set out to find some back way in.

The alleyway was indirectly lit; the illumination from the streetlights only reached a few yards from the sidewalk. Pulsing light from the ambulance emergency lights washed intermittently over the bricks, staining them with red. If it hadn't been for his pale skin and hair, she wouldn't have seen him at all. He lay face down in the trash-strewn alley, one hand outstretched as though grasping at something just beyond his reach. Twin puncture wounds stood out angrily against the white flesh of his throat, and his lips were stained with blood.

Buffy knelt, heedless of the muck, and lifted Spike's limp body in her arms to cradle him against her chest. They always leave me. Damn you, Spike - don't you do this to me. "Don't you fucking dare leave me again, you coward!" Her tears streaked the blood and dust on his ravaged face as she held him, rocking helplessly and sobbing. You did it; you stopped her. I know you did. But it wasn't supposed to be like this.
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Not the end...